Catching Up with Chris O’Donnell
How the proud BC grad went from Hollywood It Boy to star of the hottest show on network television.
In Schmigadoon!, two New Yorkers are transported to a fantastical town from a Broadway musical.
Photo: Matthew Murphy
Staging a Success
Schmigadoon!, with two BC alumni on its producing team, won the Tony Award this year as Broadway’s best musical. Can the show pull off the toughest act of all…turning a profit?
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At the Tony Awards in June, the effervescent Broadway comedy Schmigadoon! won in four categories, including the night’s biggest prize, Best Musical. Two Boston College alumni were at Radio City Music Hall to accept the trophy as part of the show’s producing team. “I watched the Tonys when I was a kid,” said Taylor Tranfaglia ’18, “so to be up there on stage was one of the top moments of my life.” Sam Biondolillo ’18 said the whole thing “didn’t feel real. Everyone involved in the show had worked so hard to get to that moment.”
The behind-the-scenes toil of producers like Tranfaglia and Biondolillo is rarely visible to audiences, but their efforts are as instrumental to the success of a musical as the performers who sing and dance on stage each night. Producers mainly oversee the business side of a show, from licensing or commissioning scripts and scores to assembling a creative team to, crucially, raising the millions of dollars necessary for staging a major Broadway production. It’s always been a challenge to convince financial backers to invest in an idea, and it’s not getting any easier. Broadway shows are increasingly expensive to produce and competition for audiences is thick. Only about 10 percent of musicals are estimated to turn a profit during their Broadway run—about half the historical average, according to the Broadway League, the industry’s trade association.
So it’s a big deal that Schmigadoon!—which also took home Tony awards for Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Orchestrations—has received the kind of critical accolades that have the power to boost ticket sales. In the months since the Tony wins, the show, which is about a couple from current-day New York City who find themselves magically trapped inside a small town from a 1940s Broadway musical, has reportedly been selling to between 91 and 99 percent of weekly capacity at New York’s Nederlander Theatre. In fact, the show’s run at the venue was recently extended for the second time and now stretches into April 2027.
Taylor Tranfaglia and Sam Biondolillo at the 2026 Tony Awards. Photo: Laurel Hinton
Filling thousands of seats nightly is undoubtedly impressive. But on Broadway, margins are so thin that it remains an open question whether Schmigadoon!, which according to The New York Times cost about $12.9 million to mount, can beat the odds and turn a profit before the end of its current run. “We’re feeling good,” is how Tranfaglia put the prospects. If attendance remains strong, she is hopeful the show’s run will continue to be extended. Plus, she pointed out, many shows that don’t recoup their budgets directly through Broadway ticket sales still wind up making a profit through other opportunities that producers arrange. For instance, Schmigadoon!, which is a theatrical adaptation of a former Apple TV series, is scheduled to hit the road on a national tour next fall, and there are plans to license it for high school performances, too.
How do Broadway producers convince investors to place a long-term bet on a show? “The key to working with investors is to share a mutual passion for this industry and be honest with them about the landscape,” Tranfaglia said. The landscape is rocky right now. It is true, for instance, that Broadway’s 2025–2026 season set an all-time box office record with $1.91 billion in ticket sales, and the previous season saw the second-highest attendance on record (about fifteen million theatergoers). However, that growth has been driven largely by increased attendance at plays starring major celebrities, while attendance at musicals has actually seen a slight decline. Meanwhile, overhead expenses, from theater rent to labor costs, continue to go up. And that, said Tranfaglia, is why it’s so important to find investors—whether they’re philanthropic retirees or entertainment industry up-and-comers—who believe strongly that the show you’re proposing simply deserves to exist.
Tranfaglia grew up performing in youth productions in the Massachusetts Berkshires. She majored in theater at BC and is now chief of staff at No Guarantees Productions, a leading producer of Schmigadoon!, in New York. As an associate producer assigned to the show, Tranfaglia took a leading role in managing logistics and fundraising. “A big part of my job was to chase people and explain to them why this was such an important project,” she said. “What really sold it to a lot of investors is that we needed a show that was about joy, and inclusivity, and was really funny.”
Biondolillo began working on the show when Tranfaglia reached out looking for help with raising capital. His introduction to local theater came while growing up in Vermont, and today he runs the New York–based production company SAMS Entertainment, which is coproducing Schmigadoon!, as well as a theatrical lighting design company. “It’s a show about community and bringing people together, and that’s what the world is craving at this moment in time,” he said. Producers understand the financial risks of the business of Broadway, he added, but are motivated by the creative rewards. In that sense, Schmigadoon! is already a home run, regardless of whether it eventually turns a profit. “There’s a perception that producers are bad guys, trying to squeeze every penny out of something,” he said. “But there’s a certain point where people go, ‘Even if we lose money, I think it’s worth having it out there.’” ◽
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